District 9 Writer Picks Her Next Project, A Stone Monster Movie

District 9 writer Terri Tatchell just received an Oscar nomination for co-writer 2009’s best sci-fi film with director Neill Blomkamp. What is she going to do next? No, not go to Disneyland. They would have to win first. Fingers crossed, everyone.

Instead, Tatchell is already deep into the second draft of her next project, Terminus. Like District 9, it is based on a short and being adapted to feature length for its original director Trevor Cawood. The short debuted in 2007 at the Toronto Film Festival and according to Tatchell, was well received. At least, that’s what she told io9 in an interview this week:

“The film I’m working on now is an adaptation of a short film called Terminus. It’s a bit more science fiction, fantasy. It’s about a stone creature that follows this stressed-out guy around, just stressing him more and more. It was incredibly well received, and the director that created it, [Trevor Cawood] hasn’t done a feature yet, and he’s really talented. I approached him about writing a feature script of that. It’s been a little more challenging than I expected it to be. I’m probably on my second draft now. I’m not ready to send it off yet, but we’ll see.”

The folks at Short of the Week described Cawood’s short as a “dark comedy about the self-destructive nature of the human mind and the dangers of urban isolation.” As you can see below, that’s about what it is. It is about a stressed out guy who is driven mad by a stone creature who inexplicably begins following around. See for yourself:

Unlike Alive in Joburg, which felt ready for adaptation right off the bat, Terminus is a peculiar little film. It works extremely well as an 8-minute short, but it is hard to see where a narrative can be built. Perhaps these stone creatures are here for a reason? Maybe they are spirits from another world who come to inhabit the world’s inanimate objects.

For the purposes of the io9 interview, Tatchell wasn’t saying anything more about the adaptation. She did, however, say that she’s yearning to get into the world of children’s books. Maybe we’ll see a version of ‘Every Prawn Poops’ someday. Who knows.

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